


there are roads left in both of our shoes

by impromptu_song



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Firefighters, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-25
Updated: 2013-06-25
Packaged: 2017-12-16 04:35:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/857853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impromptu_song/pseuds/impromptu_song
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christy happens upon an old acquaintance at her new job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there are roads left in both of our shoes

**Author's Note:**

> written for the kink meme prompt:
> 
> "It has been years since Eduardo broke up with Christy and she has moved on . One day, she spots him with Mark and their little kid at a playground, or bakery shop or taking a walk downtown ....If she comes up to them to say hi is up to u. From Christy's POV."
> 
> I started this a long time ago and I found it on my laptop yesterday so I decided to just finish it up. It didn't turn out like I wanted it to originally but whatever.
> 
> This is unbetaed, unread, etc., so all mistakes are mine.

She's not usually in at this time of day. Looking out the window in the sweater she had found on sale at K-Mart and with a steaming mug of coffee in her hands, she can see the weak sunlight of the early morning begin to crawl over the buildings in the shopping center across the street. 

She's just starting to see people arriving in the parking lot for their morning coffee fix when she hears someone walk in and clear his throat. 

"It's weird, being here so early, isn't it?" Christy turns around to see Lorne, bundled in a Northface jacket with his own cup of coffee in his hands.

"Well, you could technically say it's weird being here so late," she quips, putting her coffee down. Usually, when she's at the station, it's some ungodly hour and lots of shouting and sirens surrounding her as she scrambles for her gear and starts to load up the truck. "So when are the little monsters supposed to show up?" she asks.

"Ten, I think," he says, checking his watch. "So that means in three or so hours." 

Every year or so, the local elementary schools, in an attempt to show more appreciation for local services like the fire department, take field trips so the kids can learn more about local heroes like Christy and Lorne, who voluntarily leave for the fire station at odd times of the day to put out fires and clear roadblocks, and on one interesting occasion, save a poor little girl's kitten that had run up a tree. This year, Mike, the fire chief, had decided to ask Lorne and Christy to be present to represent the volunteer firefighters. Lorne was asked because he is the eldest of the volunteers, with gray hair and grown children, and Christy was asked, frankly, because she is a girl. 

Christy is the only female firefighter at the station, and one of the three or four in the Bay Area. She sometimes gets a double-take or two while she’s on duty, but usually, people are too busy trying to stay alive to really care. 

She's heard of numerous cases of sexual harassment of female firefighters nationwide, but it hasn't been a problem at her station, where most of the men are either nice and respectful or just incredibly intimidated by her. 

A few of the guys know that she graduated from Harvard with a business degree and a recently realized notion that she had an anger management problem that may or may not have involved fire and that, well, she needed help. Alice had an apartment in the Santa Clara area and offered her a place to stay with minimal rent and a refrigerator that was nearly always stocked with items from every food group. It didn't take long to find an internship at some business firm, and she started to see a therapist on the side. 

Her therapist, Janice, recommended that she start finding other ways to channel her anger, so she took up karate again. She had learned the basics as an eleven-year-old with a father that was worried about his only daughter not being able to defend herself in the future, but she had stopped soon after she started when her piano lessons and dance recitals had gotten in the way. She took up kickboxing and yoga as well, and these activities helped, and she even built up more muscle and became stronger. She didn't lash out as much and she was making progress.

One afternoon, she was in Janice's office for her weekly visit when Janice mentioned something about "Facebook, this website that all my friends are using to reconnect with their high school and college friends," so Christy told her about her college boyfriend who was one of the co-founders of what was known as "thefacebook" and how it hadn't worked out and how yes, he had a lot going on then, but he was really kind of a jerk of a boyfriend in the end and how, well, yes, she wasn't exactly great either with her obsessive behavior and setting his gift to her on fire either. It hadn't ended well, but it made a great story for awkward silences at parties. (Oh, and did she mention, he's gay and has a supposedly adorable kid with the second-youngest millionaire and the founder and CEO of Facebook? Because yeah, that also happened.)

Janice had smiled and joked about how her inclination for fire (it wasn't the first story to end with a few flames here and there) could come in handy and how maybe she should become a firefighter and, well, Christy took the comment to heart.

She knew that becoming a full-time firefighter was out of the question, so she looked into volunteering. She had to spend a lot of time at the gym to build up more muscle to pass the physical test, but after taking the courses and passing the tests, she was in. She got texts when there was an emergency, and she came in every time no matter how late it was or what she was doing. At this point, she has directly saved twenty-two lives and countless more indirectly, and it's helping her anger management a lot. When the fragility of human lives is emphasized like they often are during disasters, the little things she used to freak out over are put in perspective.

So, Christy is at the station with Lorne and their cups of coffee watching the shopping plaza across the street come to life and waiting for the elementary school students to arrive and gawk and poke at their equipment.

When they finally do arrive, it's, well, noisy. It turns out that the kids are kindergardeners and first graders, and Christy can't help but wonder if she was this loud at five years old, but she was always told that she was somewhat prone to tantrums, so yes, she probably was. 

It looks like there are two or three different classes in attendance while the teachers and chaperones go around shushing and trying to calm down the students so that they're sitting criss-cross applesauce and giving their full attention to Mike, who introduces the full-time firefighters first. 

About half of the full-timers are younger and closer to the stereotypical firefighters that you see in movies and tv shows with rock hard muscles and pretty impressive bodies overall. However, their personalities range from cocky and confident to shy and timid to just dumb. Some of them were high school or college drop-outs that either failed or just left school and couldn’t find a job. Some of them were jocks at school that got through school on sports scholarships and barely there grades from generous teachers and couldn’t find a job after college. But a few of them, just a couple, wanted the job. They were genuine. They saved lives. Times were hard with a job like that, but.

But there’s nothing like the grateful praises and smiles and the relief of the saved and their families. There’s nothing like the cards they get every once in a while from families that they had saved. 

It’s reward enough, really. 

Mike wraps up the full-timers and moves on to Christy and Lorne. He explains how they’re different from the others because they volunteer their time and energy and don’t get paid. 

Lorne introduces himself first and tells them about why he first volunteered. He tells them about all the Christmas cards he receives from thankful families and how rewarding the experience really is. The kids ask a couple questions here and there about how hot the fire is and how old he is and, in one case, what his favorite color is. He answers with red, of course, without missing a beat, which makes her smile and the kids giggle.

Finally, it’s her turn to introduce herself.

She talks about how hard she had to work to even be considered for volunteer work and all the different classes she had to take to qualify. She talks about coming in at three in the morning when some poor family accidentally left the stove on or had a gas leak, but how it’s all worth it in the end to know that you’ve made a difference in someone’s life. 

A little girl with pigtails in the back asks her if she’s really “the only girl firefighter here” and she smiles and says, “Yes, but these hooligans need someone to keep them in line, don’t they?” with a wink, and the girl nods enthusiastically before giggling and whispering something to the girl next to her with a smile on her face.

A couple more questions are asked by the little kids, but they’re clearly getting antsy and fidgety after staying still for so long, so Mike allows them to look at the equipment and tour the inside of one of the firetrucks.

She’s explaining the buttons in the truck and their functions to a small group of kids when someone taps her shoulder. She turns around and--

Lo and behold.

“Hey Christy,” Eduardo Saverin says with a nervous smile. “Long time no see.”

He doesn’t look too different from when she last saw him at Harvard. (It was in passing, of course. She had heard about what happened with Facebook and Mark. Everyone had heard about what happened with Facebook and Mark. She saw him in the halls once and kept her eyes trained ahead.) He has more wrinkles now (she hopes they’re from smiling and not from frowning) and he’s a little more heavily set than before. He’s still in one of his trademark suits that look out of place in the fire department filled with tired and sleep-deprived firefighters and hyper kindergardeners running around pretending to save each other from wildfires.

She hadn’t paid the parents much attention earlier, which would explain why she hadn’t seen the shocked expression of realization and recognization a minute after the kids had all sat down. 

It must have been awkward, approaching her for the first time since that fateful night in Cambridge. She still remembers the wide-eyed panic on his face and the rage and betrayal she felt hot and curdling in her gut. Now, she feels guilt.

“Hi,” she says, giving the warmest smile she can muster. “I didn’t know you were here!” She quickly waves Lorne over to help her finish explaining the buttons.

“Yeah, um, that’s Julie,” he says, pointing to a little girl with brown curls and a missing front tooth enthusiasticly petting Scooter, the department’s three-year-old dalmatian. 

“She’s adorable,” Christy says. “How old is she?”

“She’s going to be five in April,” he answers. She nods in acknowledgement and thinks about the first time she had heard about Julie. Had it from a friend? Did she read about it online?

They watch Julie and her friends play with Scooter in comfortable silence for a few minutes before Eduardo interrupts her thoughts. “Christy,” he begins, “This is way overdue, but I really want to apologize for, um, how I treated you while we were together. I was… well, I was just a really bad boyfriend to you and you definitely didn’t deserve that at all. It took me a long time to really see how badly I treated you, but you know what they say, hindsight is twenty-twenty.”

Christy widens her eyes in surprise. “Oh, well, I was actually just thinking about how to properly apologize for how things ended between us. With the me setting your gift on fire and all that.”

Eduardo smiles wryly. “I guess we just weren’t good at being in a relationship together.”

“No, I guess not,” she agrees. “But you’re forgiven.”

“Thanks,” he says. “Hey, do you want to meet Julie?”

“Sure,” she says and watches Eduardo go over to the small crowd of children and say something to his daughter before taking her hand and leading her to where Christy’s standing. 

“Julie, this is a friend of mine from college. Her name’s Christy,” Eduardo says, crouching down to Julie’s level. “Say hi!”

Julie obediently waves at Christy before scrunching her nose up at Eduardo. “I already knew her name, Papai,” she says plaintively. “I was listening when she was talking!” She then looks at Christy and beams. “You’re my favorite firefighter I met today, Christy!”

Christy smiles at that. “And why’s that, Julie?”

“Because you work just as hard as everyone else but you have the prettiest hair,” she answers with a toothy smile. 

Christy and Eduardo both laugh and Christy crouches down to Julie’s level. “What about your hair? I would just die to have curly hair as pretty as yours.”

Julie scrunches her nose up again. “Curls are gross.”

“Hey,” Eduardo interjects. “I think curls are very pretty.”

“You don’t count, Papai. Daddy and I both have curls so you have to say that,” Julie reasons petulantly and Christy stifles a laugh. 

“Okay, okay,” Eduardo concedes. “You can go back to your friends now.” Julie waves goodbye to Christy before rejoining the little crowd surrounding Scooter, who’s now doing little tricks for his little admirers. 

“She’s very adorable,” Christy says.

“She’s also very stubborn.”

“I think that only adds to the adorable.”

“It does until it’s bedtime and she refuses to go to bed.”

Christy laughs. “So how’s Mark doing?”

Eduardo’s smile grows a little at the mention of Mark. “He’s good. Facebook’s doing well. He eats and sleeps properly now, which is nice because I’m not sure if I could handle stubborn two children.”

In the next half hour they manage to catch up on each other’s lives and before they know it the teachers are calling their students and chaperones back to the bus. They say goodbye and hug, promising to talk later and keep in touch, but it isn’t until the bus has left that Christy realizes that they never exchanged emails or phone numbers. 

When Christy arrives back at the apartment she says a quick hello to Alice and goes to her room and takes off her sweater before waking her laptop. Her Facebook profile is open and she notices that she has a new friend request.

_Eduardo Saverin_

Christy smiles and clicks accept.


End file.
